FMC Yenagoa to conduct mass burial for unclaimed bodies

Owing to the pollution of the environment and the attendant health hazard to the people, the management of the Federal Medical Centre in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, has announced plans to conduct mass burial of unclaimed bodies in its mortuary.

The institution which resumes normal activities after workers had called off the strike they embarked upon over issue of payment recently, has issued a 21-day notice informing the public of its decision and asking owners of the unclaimed bodies to identify theirs and have them removed.

It disclosed that many of the bodies had been abandoned for over 10 to 15 years, though the total number of corpses were being verified and separated by the pathologists in the hospital.

Chief Medical Director , Dr. Dennis Allagoa, explained that the move among other things was to create space in the mortuary as fresh corpses were being brought in daily.

He also cited pollution of the environment of the health facility as reason for the decision.
Allagoa said: “We issued a 21-day public notice because we noticed that corpses have littered the entire mortuary and there was no space to take in new corpses.

“As the decay goes on in the mortuary, the bodies have become a threat to human life because chemical and biochemical effects are ongoing.

“So, we want to clean up the area so that people can enjoy the benefit of a good site and space to bring in their corpses”.

He added that most of the unclaimed corpses were deposited by security personnel while others were found on the road and the rivers and brought to the morgue.

“A lot of them were bodies that were deposited by the security agents. Most of them are just bones, legs, they are not actually full body parts.”

“People that died on the road, they brought them , from the river they brought them. People that died due to issues of militancy, they brought them in their mass and they kept them here”, Allagoa said.

He, however, noted that the mass burial would follow due process and that it would be transparent as relevant stakeholders including the police, officials of the ministries of environment and judiciary and the media had been placed on alert.